Stainless Steel Toilets

Stainless Steel Toilets

Toilet facilities made entirely of stainless steel are
not the warmest environment, in either the literal
or figurative sense, but sometimes ruggedness is more
important than creature comforts.
It's hard to damage a stainless steel lavatory.

Stainless steel toilets and associated fixtures and panels
are usually manufactured from
SAE 304 stainless steel,
the most commonly used alloy of stainless steel.
It typically contains 18–20% chromium and
8–10.5% nickel,
in addition to no more than 2% manganese, 0.75% silicon,
and 0.1% carbon.

This gives stainless steel much higher resistance to
corrosion than typical steel alloys.
A very thin passivation layer of Cr2O3
forms on the surface, and re-forms quickly if the surface
is scratched.

On Trains

This stainless steel toilet is part of a largely
stainless bathroom suite on board a
MARC (Maryland Rail Commuter Service) train
between Washington and Baltimore on the east
coast of the US.

During the 1970's the U.S. federal government nationalized
most all passenger rail service in the United States,
forming
Amtrak.
The resulting trains are nice inside, and along the
East Coast they maintain useful schedules.

These toilets, however, are from
The Cardinal, which links
Chicago and New York via Cincinnati and Washington,
loosely approximating a three-times-weekly schedule,
and Chicago and Indianapolis on the other four days.
At least the stainless toilets are fairly nice!

They're the classic holding tank design, which means
that the tank can fill and the lavatory be closed
en route on the 26-hour trip between
New York and Chicago.

On Buses

Yes, Greyhound buses have on-board toilets.
They have a holding tank with the traditional blue juice.
I was surprised to see that the design is just a straight
drop down a wide shaft into the tank.
I would think that the toilet could get awfully smelly
on a long hot trip.
There is a small air vent directly to the exterior
just to the right of your head if you were sitting
on the seat.

The toilet compartment occupies the right half of what
would be a full-width rear bench seat and what would be
the pair of seats just in front of that on the right side
of the aisle.

Note to self — do not sit in the back two rows of
a Greyhound bus, where the door to the toilet is directly
across the aisle.

Megabus,
one of Greyhound's competitors,
connects major cities with luxury buses that you can
board without venturing into the always dicey Greyhound
terminal.
Greyhound's market seems partially based on brand
loyalty based on fond memories of rides home
from prison.

Anyway, the Megabus buses are quite nice, and they
include an on-board lavatory.
But as you see here, they're very similar to
the Greyhound ones.
There are only so many things you can do
with the design of a long-haul bus toilet.

On Ships

The Staten Island Ferry provides free rides between the
lower tip of Manhattan and Staten Island, across New York
harbor and past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

If you need to go before you board, the first toilet shown
here is an all-stainless-steel model in the Manhattan terminal.

My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001,
although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous
Toilet of the World page until
January 17, 2002.
Some time soon after that I split it into categories,
and the collection has grown ever since.

In December, 2010 I registered the
toilet-guru.com
domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.